


A Doublet for Florian

by Unreal_Kitty



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Extended Scene, Fluff and Angst, Identity Issues, Ironborn Culture & Customs, Mid-Canon, POV Theon Greyjoy, Theon Greyjoy-centric, fashion - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23498830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unreal_Kitty/pseuds/Unreal_Kitty
Summary: In which Sansa gives a gift, and Theon learns a lesson in fashion.Theon Greyjoy wants two things: to be a Stark and to be a hero. A knight from a fairytale. Perhaps if he wears the right clothes, he could convince the world —and himself—that he is both.Filling the “fashion” prompt for the March 2020 Theonsa challenge
Relationships: Balon Greyjoy & Theon Greyjoy, Theon Greyjoy & Ned Stark, Theon Greyjoy & Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52
Collections: Theonsa Challenge 2020





	1. Florian With A Twist

**Author's Note:**

> Of all the characters in ASOIAF/GOT, the two whose narrative arcs are reflected through their clothing and appearance, again and again, are Sansa and Theon. I wanted to explore that here. Fashion and fairytale, who does Theon, in particular, try to be when he gets dressed? And how does Sansa, Sansa with her stories of Florian and Jonquil, tie in?

“You’re not _really_ going to wear that, are you?” 

Theon nearly jumped out of his skin. Sansa Stark stood framed in his doorway, looking him up and down with a mix of amusement and wry disgust. Her direwolf pup, Lady, sat at her heel. 

“What’s wrong with this?” he asked, hurrying to the small looking glass in his room to inspect himself. His doublet was freshly cleaned, if somewhat worn, and his leather boots were polished to perfection. Only just this morning, Theon’s mass of curls were cut alongside Robb and Jon’s unruly hair. His shorter haircut revealed a golden earring, glinting on one ear, which matched the golden chain around his neck. 

He shot Sansa a cheeky grin in the mirror. He cut a fine figure, he thought. 

She rolled her eyes and strode into his chamber, Lady padding behind her. Uninvited, Theon noted. Though if he were honest with himself, he could use the company. The king’s arrival had sent the whole castle into a flurry of activity, and Robb in particular, as Ned’s heir, was too busy making introductions and entertaining his southern guests to spend much time with Theon. 

The guests in question were utterly uninterested in the ironborn ward, other than to wrankle him with barbed comments about the kraken who fancies himself a wolf. “Are you lost, lad? I’m afraid the sea is terribly far from here,” said the Imp with mock concern. “Or have you spent so long in this wolf’s den, you think you’ve grown a tail!” 

He thinks he’s so clever, Theon had thought. _As though I haven't heard it all a hundred times before._ No, best to stay away from these Lannisters and their cruel tongues. 

Theon had even considered spending the day with Jon Snow of all people, as Lady Catelyn had insisted the bastard make himself scarce during the royal visit. And they were of an age, after all. But, shockingly, Jon was in a brooding mood. Theon would rather be lonely than suffer Jon at his most pensive and dour. 

But now, here was Sansa, her eyes shining in excitement for the upcoming feast — the biggest and most important one to have graced Winterfell since before either of them were born. Inwardly, he brightened. If anyone could banish Theon’s doldrums, it was Sansa Stark. 

“What’s wrong with it?” she repeated, incredulously. “That doublet is ancient! Look at it, what color is it even supposed to be?” 

“Black, of course. I’m a Greyjoy, after all.”

“Well, Theon, I hate to break it to you, but that thing you’re wearing is Stark grey. And probably has been for years.” 

Theon laughed, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. _That’s the last thing I need,_ he thought ruefully. _Now they’ll really call me a squid in wolf's fur._ He tried not to dwell on how sorely he wished that he, like Robb and Sansa and the rest, could wear the Stark colors without comment. 

“Well, what would you have me do, Sansa?” he asked, infusing as much levity into his voice as he could muster. “The feast is in less than an hour, and this is my best doublet.”

“I can’t let you wear that in front of everyone.”

“Ah, shall I go naked, then?” He began to strip off the offending garment. 

“Theon!” She smacked his arm. “You’re worse than Robb.”

“I should hope so.”

She signed theatrically. “What have I done, that the gods would curse me with so many annoying brothers?”

Part of Theon wanted to crow with delight that Sansa would so casually lump him in with her family. So why did the word ‘brother’ feel like a knife in his gut? He quickly made to cover his discomfort with humor. “Brothers? Last time I checked, you had an annoying sister as well.”

“Arya isn’t my sister. She’s a rabid beast that the kennel master accidentally let into the castle.” 

“Really, Sansa, there’s no need to play the gentle lady around me. Tell us how you really feel, hmm?”

She smacked him again. “For that comment, I should just leave and forget about your present.”

“My...present?” Theon was perplexed. It wasn’t his name day, and Sansa had never brought him gifts before, other than a courtly story she’d invent by the fire, or a song or two. 

It was only then that he realized she’d been holding her hands behind her back since the moment she appeared at his door. 

“I told you, I can’t let you wear that ragged old outfit to the king’s feast.” She whipped her arms around with a flourish, presenting him with a neatly-wrapped parcel. Stunned, Theon opened it and pulled out a fresh new doublet. 

The velvet cloth was a rich black, so dark it put the midnight sky to shame. The garment was cut in the newer fashion, a sleek design more similar to the fine style of the southern lords than the heavy, dated look of the North. Best of all, the chest boasted an embroidered kraken, glinting proudly in golden thread. 

Theon gaped at the gift, stunned. He looked up at Sansa. “Sansa...it’s...I...” Try as he might, he couldn’t manage to string together a coherent sentence. 

Her blue eyes danced. “So you like it, then?”

_Come on, lad. Words, words, you like words. You’re good at words. Say something!_

“Like it? Sansa...this is the nicest thing anyone's—” To his horror, Theon felt his vision blurr. Frantically, he made a show of admiring the doublet. _Pull yourself together, Greyjoy. You’re ironborn. And a man grown, more or less. Do the knights in the stories blubber at a kind word? Did Symeon Star-Eyes ever weep in front of a lady?_

Drawing upon the image of his favorite legendary hero, Theon collected himself and straightened his shoulders. “It’s fantastic.” In a moment of inspiration, he grasped Sansa’s hand and brushed his lips against it, bowing. “Thank you, my lady.” 

So confident only a moment before, the girl glanced away shyly, a deep blush creeping upon her face. “My pleasure, er, my lord. I stitched the embroidery myself. It’s based on the Greyjoy sigil I found in one of Maester Lewin’s books. I figured…I thought...” She trailed off, then brightened. “Well, aren't you going to try it on?”

“What, now?”

“You said yourself the feast is in less than an hour. There’s no time to lose.”

Theon grinned, raising one roguish eyebrow. “If the lady insists.”

He unfastened his faded doublet, revealing the (blessedly fresh, if unremarkable) shirt beneath. Lady sniffed at the discarded garment. Turning to the mirror, he shrugged on Sansa’s gift and settled the golden chain back into place on top of the doublet.

“How do I look?” He spread his arms and turned about in a circle, overly dramatic. 

Sansa drew close, tugging the wrinkles out of the fabric, then stepped back. 

“Like a prince,” she said, in a voice that seemed almost surprised. “Like a knight from the stories. Like Florian.”

The earnestness of her answer caught Theon by surprise. He fumbled for a joke to break the strange energy between them. “Like Florian?” He pretended to be offended.“You think me a Fool, huh?”

Sansa shook her head slowly, the spell broken. “Yes, Theon, the biggest fool in Winterfell. I expect you’ll annoy the whole Hall with your jesting tonight.” 

“Nah, your father warned me to behave.”

“My father always warns you to behave. You rarely listen. I don’t see why tonight would be any different.”

Theon smirked. “I _always_ listen. We just don’t agree on what constitutes good behavior.” 

“You’re impossible.”

“I’m ironborn. And a Grejoy at that. They say there’s merling blood in our veins. Of course I’m impossible.” He ruffled the fur between Lady’s ears. The direwolf wagged her tail. 

Sansa laughed. The sound rang like springtime. How did she do that?

“Alright then, my Lord Merling. Just try to avoid insulting our Lannister guests, or gods forbid, the king, will you? I like you with your head attached.” 

Theon laughed, although the image of Lord Eddard’s greatsword flashed before him. The dull thud as the head of that Night’s Watch deserter rolled across the field. 

He swallowed and found a suitably-light tone. “So do I.”

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Sansa left, Theon plopped onto his bed with a sigh. 

Tonight, he would be sitting with Robb near the high table, a place befitting Lord Eddard’s ward. Sitting with Ned Stark’s own sons and daughters. 

_A brother, she called me. A Stark in all but name. Forget the sword, it’s not for me. I’m no crow-turned-coward. I’m no turncloak._

He sprang out of bed, catlike, and inspected himself in the mirror again. The firelight glinted off his auburn curls, turning them to red-gold. _A prince, she called me._

He twisted his torso a bit, taking in every angle of his new doublet. House Greyjoy, the golden kraken proclaimed. We do not sow! 

He grazed a finger along one curling tentacle. _A pirate prince, perhaps._

Theon’s lip quirked into a rakish half-smile. Lady Catelyn had wanted him to take out his earring for the king’s arrival, but he insisted on keeping it. “I’m ironborn,” he had argued. “It is our custom!” Surprisingly, she had relented. 

Between the earring and the doublet, no one would accuse him of forgetting his name. 

“I’m Theon Greyjoy,” he told his reflection. “Last surviving son of Balon Grejoy, Lord Reaper of the Iron Isles.”

He squinted at Sansa’s needlework. The stitches were so small, so even, so precise. It must have taken her weeks to embroider the entire design. 

“Theon Grejoy,” he repeated. “Ward of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. 

He really did look like a prince, he thought, dressed in his finery with the candlelight turning his hair to fire. Just like the ones in Sansa’s stories. 

Sansa. She looked at him...so oddly, today. Like he was a stranger, though she called him brother. 

_Not exactly,_ Theon argued. _She said she was cursed with annoying brothers. She didn’t literally name me one of them._

Sansa had looked at him so oddly, after he donned the stylish velvet doublet. _She called me a knight. She called me Florian._

_Florian._ He drew himself up as tall as he could and puffed out his chest. Sansa was a lady, a real lady, everyone could see. She even named her wolf for it. A lady born to walk on the arm of a knight, if perhaps a foolish one. 

A different kind of smile bloomed onto Theon’s lips. Soft and full of hope. He couldn’t wait for Ned to see him like this, in his new black doublet with the golden thread. Perhaps, Ned too, would see another Florian. Theon’s hand rose to his earring. _Florian with a twist._

Perhaps, when Ned would see Theon and Sansa in the Great Hall together, he would liken them to Florian and Jonquil, a matched pair. And perhaps he would think to himself, “Ah, at last! Here is a boy—no, a _man_ —worthy of his daughter’s hand. A man worthy of House Stark.”

Theon smoothed out his doublet one last time and hurried out the door. Pirate or no, it wouldn’t do to be late to the king’s feast.


	2. Iron or Gold?

Pyke was smaller than Theon remembered, and quieter too. 

True, he had been a young boy when last he’d seen it, and his memory of the island was fuzzy around the edges. But he could still recall the music, as clear and shining as the morning. By noon, the docks would be crammed with people. Reavers and fishwives and merchants too, all singing as they went about their day. 

Longboats were the heart of the Ironborn, true, and the sea their blood. But their soul, oh, their soul was made of stories. And on the Islands, all stories are told through song. 

But today the docks were quiet. The few people bustling about their business kept their heads low and their eyes on their tasks. The long years since the end of the Greyjoy Rebellion had battered them into a grim, bitter people. 

Theon had expected a procession to receive him, an honor guard of ships at least. After all, he was their prodigal prince, returned at last. Balon’s boy had come home, a man grown, with gold around his neck and a king’s favor at his breast. Theon had rode at the Young Wolf’s side to war, had fought fiercely in the Whispering Wood, had even slain wildlings in a daring rescue of Bran Stark. 

_It’s a shame, really,_ he thought as his ship passed through the silent and nearly empty dock. _My adventures would have made for a splendid song._

He tossed his head, as though to banish the intruding gloom. Cheer up, lad. Once I take Lannisport and rescue the girls from King’s Landing, the songs they sing of me will be grander than anything they’d come up with now.

The image of Cersei Lannister glowering as she handed over Sansa and Arya floated into his mind. Sansa would rush into his arms, her head on his shoulder. It would be just like the heroes in the stories. Then, they’d sail north from the conquered Casterly Rock, and Robb would see him standing victorious at the bow of his ship with the wind in his hair…

_How would the song go? Let’s see…_

The wave of the Stark banner on his ship’s mast caught Theon’s eye. As the official envoy of the King in North, he thought it fitting to sail beneath Robb’s banner as well as his own sigil. The grey wolf on the white field gave him an idea.

_A pack of wolves, they were  
Proud and fearsome and fair,  
But none so bold as the black and gold  
The Kraken of —_

Theon paused. _The Kraken? No, that’s not enough. It needs a little...something. The Young Kraken? No, too similar to Robb’s. The Kraken Knight? Ugh, too pretentious._ Theon frowned. _Well, I’m sure they’ll come up with a grand kenning for me._

He chuckled to himself. _Step aside, Florian, you’ll have nothing on me!_

He cleared his throat, but before he could return to his daydreams, the ship’s captain approached him. 

“We’re ready to dock, milord.” 

Theon straightened his doublet and adjusted the chain that fastened his cloak. The golden kraken flashed proudly on his chest. His entourage would be waiting for him at the castle with his father, he was sure of it.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Who gave you those clothes? Was it Ned Stark’s pleasure to make you his daughter?”

When Theon was a boy of seven, Robb Stark had once pushed him into a freezing stream in the wolfswood. To this day, he could recall the icy shock of hitting the water. His homecoming felt much the same way. 

“If my clothes offend you, I will change them,” he replied, with more steel in his voice then he felt in his heart. This was his favorite doublet. Sansa Stark had embroidered it herself. And yet, his father found it...offensive? 

The Lord Reaper appeared unimpressed. “You will,” said Balon. He peered at Theon, a suspicious frown growing on his face.“That bauble around your neck, did you pay the iron price for it, or the gold?”

Theon found he couldn’t gain control of his tongue. He stared at the older man, frozen, a rabbit caught in the gaze of a fox. 

“I asked a question. Did you pull it from the neck of a corpse you made or did you buy it to match your fine clothes?” Balon advanced on him, looming and terrible. Finally, he halted, his face inches from Theon’s. “Iron or gold?” he rumbled. 

Theon hadn’t seen his father in nine years. During that long time, his father’s face, along with the rest of his family’s, had faded, like a doublet left in the sun for too long. His father’s eyes, now striking him like fired arrows, were a stranger’s eyes, cold and accusing. 

And yet, they were Theon’s eyes. The color of seaglass. Shifting green to blue and back again, as fickle as the ocean itself. 

_This is your blood,_ Theon thought. _These are the eyes of your father. And a kraken, a kraken who runs with wolves, does not fear his own father’s eyes._ He found the strength to speak, and speak true. 

“Gold.”

Balon tore the chain from his chest. Theon refused to flinch. His cloak tumbled to the floor with a sad thump. “I will not have my son dressed as a whore,” said Balon, walking away. “My fears have come true,” he continued, more quietly. “The Starks have made you theirs.”

Theon bridled. _Theirs?_ A memory surfaced of Robb’s cold face as they debated calling the banners to march south. “It’s not your duty, cause it’s not your House,” said Stark to Greyjoy. 

“My blood is salt and iron,” he assured Balon between clenched teeth. 

“Yet the Stark boy sends you to me like a trained raven clutching his message."

This was all wrong. "The offer he makes is one I proposed."

"He heeds your counsel?"

"I've lived with him, hunted with him, fought at his side. He thinks of me as a brother." _Or Sansa does, at the very least._

"No, not here, not in my hearing,” Balon snarled. “You will not name him brother, this son of the man who put your true brothers to the sword. Or have you forgotten your own blood?"

Now Ned appeared in Theon’s mind’s eye, unbidden. The man with the sword, poised to draw iron blood…the man who lost his head to that same blade. 

Iron or Ice? Kraken or Wolf? Round and round they go. The world roiled as Theon’s hopes fell to ruins. He felt something shatter. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Later that night, salt peppered the parchment as Theon wrote to Robb in a fever. Was it sweat or tears? Even he couldn’t tell.

_Robb,_

__

__

_I hope this reaches you in time. Father has rejected your offer and plans to attack the North, raiding the shores and taking Deepwood Motte. Mobilize your army and make for the North before it’s too late. I’ll write again when I can._

_Theon_

He fingered the embroidered kraken on the front of his doublet. The iron price or the gold? What would be enough to buy him a home? To win him a family, a true family, without the shadow of the blade above his neck? 

Nothing. He would never be enough, would he? No deeds worthy of Florian, no shows of loyalty, no rescued lives of Stark children would ever be enough. The most knightly and fashionable doublets in Westeros wouldn’t make him worthy in a Stark’s eyes. Sansa—the Stark name and Sansa— would always be out of reach. 

Sansa, with her hair like fire. In Theon’s mind, her red hair matched the candleflame as he held it to the letter. It creeped up the parchment, writhing like tentacles, until nothing but ash remained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a huge thank you to my dear friend Harry Dresden for her invaluable brainstorming, idea-bouncing, editing, and overall willingness to listen to me blather on about my OTP (which is NOT hers) for hours.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a huge thank you to my dear friend Harry Dresden for her invaluable brainstorming, idea-bouncing, editing, and overall willingness to listen to me blather on about my OTP (which is NOT hers) for hours.


End file.
